28

They walked to the house in silence.

Sabrina wouldn’t characterize it as companionable silence. More like the silence that falls between total strangers sitting together on an airplane who’ve given up trying to keep the conversation going but can’t get away from each other for two more hours.

She kept a steady stream of silent prayer going. Now? Should I say something? But no nudge forward came.

When the house came into view, her mother paused. “Figures.” She kept walking.

“You know I have no idea what you’re talking about, don’t you?” Sabrina didn’t even try to keep the frustration out of her voice. “If you want to say something about the house, please say it. Otherwise, I’d appreciate it if you would keep your remarks to yourself.”

Her mother looked at her in surprise. “My, my, haven’t we grown sassy.”

“I’ve always been sassy, Mother.”

“Perhaps. Maybe I should say you’ve grown more vocal in your sassiness.”

Perhaps.

“What do you want to know, Sabrina? Your father was a complicated man. My relationship with him was complex. But you’re his daughter and you’re not my therapist. I know I’ve handled most of our”—she pointed between her and Sabrina—“relationship badly, but I don’t feel bad about the things I’ve tried to spare you from. There are things that once you know them, they cannot be unknown. You don’t get to go back to the way things were.”

Was it possible her mother would divulge the information she had been seeking? “I would rather know,” Sabrina said. “What I don’t know is driving me crazy.”

“Just remember, you asked for this.” Her mom pointed to the path that wound around the house. “Does this go all the way around?”

“It does.”

“Then let’s keep walking.”

Sabrina had no complaints and they turned to the right, their feet crunching on the tiny white gravel path.

“I loved your father at one time, Sabrina. Truly. I thought if I could get pregnant, then everything would be okay. And I did. And things seemed to be better during the pregnancy. But I went into premature labor and we lost the baby. I hemorrhaged so much they had to do a hysterectomy to save my life.”

“But . . .”

Her mom looked at her then. “We adopted you, Sabrina. You were a week old when we picked you up at an agency. Your mother was single and unable to take care of you.”

“How is that possible?” Sabrina stared into the eyes of the woman she’d called Mother for almost thirty years. “I’ve seen the records. Your medical records. My own.”

“Your father had a lawyer who said he could make it so there was absolutely no evidence that you weren’t actually ours. People knew I was pregnant and that I’d had a hard time during delivery. We’d requested no one—not even family—come to the hospital. And back then they kept us in the hospital a lot longer than they do now.”

She gave Sabrina a sad smile. “I don’t know where your dad got the idea. But he came to my hospital room and told me he knew about a baby girl. That she was gorgeous. She needed a family. That no one needed to ever know that our baby had died. We would have this baby girl and everyone would assume . . .”

Sabrina was speechless. Her mother didn’t try to explain anymore. They made it back to the front of the house before she could corral her swirling thoughts enough to ask any questions. “But why would it have been so bad to grieve your own baby?”

“It was a different time, and I was so shattered and exhausted, I wasn’t thinking clearly. By the time I was in a more stable frame of mind, you were already ours. It was done. So for the past thirty years, I’ve told people I had one baby and I never mention the one I lost.”

Her mother hadn’t been kidding when she said this was complicated.

“But what about my eyes and my hair. I look just like dad. Everyone says so.”

“Yes, you do.”